When I was preparing for my road test to earn my driver’s license, Grampa Norman went out with me. I don’t remember the car we were in. I do remember being instructed on the appropriate use of hand gestures. I passed the test. No hand gestures were required.
Norman C. Dumais taught me a lot of things.
I saw my grandfather tear up once while talking about his brothers and sisters. He was describing how they took care of each other from the very beginning and never stopped. He loved his family and always put them first. Always. It wasn’t a decision. It was a reflex.
My grandfather didn’t display vulnerability often. He didn’t have time to. He was too busy taking care of everybody else. He was the second youngest of 14. His mother died when he was 8. His father, Charles, was a brilliant mechanic, something my grandfather inherited. I watched Grampa Norman fix and build countless things growing up. Tools morphed into magic wands in his hands. I can’t list all the stories he told of things he fixed in the paper mill or at the radiator plant that nobody else could fix. The engineers, those with the college degrees and the egos to accompany, didn’t know half the time. But Norm knew. It was simply a matter of figuring it out.
Grampa Norman wasn’t intimidated by anything or anyone. At least that’s how it seemed. His motto was, “If somebody built this, I can take it apart and fix it.” He parlayed that into a career. Often, he’d figure out what design flaw caused a machine to fail. Then he’d repair it in such a manner that wouldn’t allow for that same flaw to repeat. Yet, he always credited his father as being an even better mechanic than he. Something Grampa Norman didn’t inherit from my great grandfather was his drinking problem. Charles was an alcoholic. It would be a crooked thread woven through his entire life. Grampa Norman looked out for his father despite his addiction and the delinquency it so often promoted. He didn’t enable him. He kept him safe. He didn’t have to. He felt he had to. That’s how much respect he had for his father. He was able to look beyond the design flaw and see the man he called Dad. It bit him a few times but he never stopped looking out for my great grandfather. Some of my grandfather’s siblings thought he was nuts for doing it.
That’s who Norman Dumais was, though.
He was a man who would try and fix anything. Unless it was a person. He dealt with each person as they were and simply presented his take, for what it was worth. He let you make your own choice just as long as you understood what it meant between the two of you. He loved people for who they were, not for who he wished they would be. He never tried to change anyone that I can tell.
You always knew where you stood with Norman Dumais. It’s why so many respected him after trying their damnedest not to. You may not have agreed with him, but you always respected him. There wasn’t one person he couldn’t look in the eye. He knew nobody is better than another, himself included. Which is why he could talk to anyone. If he didn’t like where you were standing he’d let you know. If you dared to call his integrity into question, which was just plain stupid to do if you knew him at all, you better have been prepared for what was about to happen. Norman Dumais never claimed to be perfect. He did claim to be honest. I never knew him to be otherwise.
He stood up for people who didn’t have the heart or the knowledge to defend themselves. At a union meeting with management, he and his union brothers were about to get the shaft, and they all knew it. Everyone was going to accept it. Grampa Norman was the only person who, in front of the entire assembly, stood up for them, and himself. Later, when he was on the board of directors at the credit union, some of his fellow board members (all with longer tenure) were engaging in unethical lending practices. They wanted him to look the other way. Grampa wouldn’t. He went face to face with them, all the way through a federal investigation. (Guess who prevailed?)
Then there’s my grandmother, Rose. Grampa Norman loved Gramma Rose. He was her caregiver for the better portion of their 63 years of marriage. Gramma Rose had all kinds of pain. Back pain. Neck pain. Leg pain. Foot pain. Her pain had pain. She also made an amazing ham sandwich and now infamous graham cracker cake. She was convinced she couldn’t sit well in most every chair found on our cherished planet. Which is why he carried one in the trunk of his car. It was the only chair she could sit in. Wherever they went, that chair joined them. He’d get laughed at. He didn’t care. He loved his wife. He did even more ridiculous acts of service like permanently switching out the passenger seat of his Lincoln Town Car so Gramma Rose could sit in it. He used the seat from their previous car. One time, he switched out the toilet seat in a hotel room so my grandmother could use it more comfortably. He served her until her very last moments. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Yep, Norman C. Dumais taught me a lot of things. He taught me how to be a man instead of a victim. He taught me how to love someone with your hands, and not just your heart. He also taught me how to play Euchre. Whenever we won a hand, it was always, “Another one for the good guys.”
I will miss him.
I already do.
Not long before he said goodbye, he said this, “Love each other and be kind to one another.”
Sounds good, Grampa. I can do that. I might not always know how, but I can figure it out.
After all, I am your grandson.
